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The Four Essential Elements for a Toxic-Free Future

What are the Four Essential Elements for a Toxic-Free Future?

A new roadmap to safer chemistry for retailers, manufacturers, and government 

The four essential elements are critical to charting a new course for our society away from the most dangerous chemicals and plastics and towards a healthier, toxic-free future for people, communities, workers, wildlife, and the environment.

For more than 40 years, Toxic-Free Future has demonstrated in policy and practice that it is possible to shift our economy away from the most dangerous chemicals and plastics and towards safer, low-hazard chemicals and materials. Building on this legacy, we developed The Four Essential Elements for a Toxic-Free Future — a roadmap for businesses and governments to create a healthier and more sustainable world.

The Four Essential Elements for a Toxic-Free Future

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Our Goals

The Four Essential Elements for a Toxic-Free Future were created to set a path to achieve:

  • Global reduction of production and use of the most hazardous chemicals and plastics by 50% by 2030
  • Global elimination of the production and use of the most hazardous chemicals and plastics by 2040

These goals would help society meet the UN Sustainability Goals and the UN Global Framework on Chemicals.

The Problem

Pollution from toxic chemicals and plastics is wreaking havoc on both human and planetary health and is inextricably linked to the climate crisis.

The vast majority of dangerous chemicals and plastics are made from fossil fuels, exponentially compounding the devastating impact of the oil and gas industry. And like climate change, the hazards of chemical pollution affect all of us with the heaviest burden falling disproportionately on the most vulnerable individuals and low-income communities and communities of color.

The Solution

Transitioning how we produce and package consumer goods to safer alternatives is more achievable than ever before. Advances in data science and safer chemistry mean that the dangers or hazards associated with the chemicals and plastics in products and packaging are knowable.

Safer chemicals and materials already exist and many more are possible with adequate investments and innovation. Some leading companies and governments are moving in the right direction and more and more are asking us to help define a healthier path forward.

This is why Toxic-Free Future developed the Four Essential Elements for a Toxic-Free Future, a new roadmap that guides businesses and governments in the transition to safer chemicals and products for our families, communities, workers, and the environment.

Why is now the time for transformational change?

We are now at a time when a transition to safer chemicals, products, and packaging has proven to be both urgent and possible because:

Toxic Overuse of Chemicals and Plastics

People and all life on Earth is threatened by the overuse of highly hazardous chemicals and plastics, exceeding planetary boundaries of safety. The production of chemicals, thousands of which are used in plastics, has increased by 50-fold since 1950 with rapid growth continuing. Hormone-disrupting chemicals are linked to a 59% decline in sperm count in Western men over the past 40 years. Aggressive cancers, particularly in younger adults, are rising rapidly, with early-onset cancer rates increasing by nearly 80% worldwide between 1990 and 2019.

Rising Corporate Liabilities

Companies are facing escalating liabilities for the impacts of dangerous chemicals like  PFAS “forever chemicals.” Thirty state attorneys general have initiated lawsuits against PFAS manufacturers and key users. The cleanup could reach $400 billion. These escalating costs are an enormous incentive for businesses to make transformative changes.

Environmental Injustice

There is growing acknowledgment of the imperative to address environmental injustice inherent in how people of color and low-income communities bear the disproportionate burden of pollution where toxic chemicals and plastics are made and disposed of. Indeed, Black Americans are 75% more likely to live near facilities that spew hazardous waste, and face double the risk of cancer from toxic air pollution compared to their white counterparts.

Chemical Industry's Role in the Climate Crisis

Solving the climate crisis requires transformation in the chemical industry, which is the biggest industrial user of fossil fuels and the third largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide. About 90% of chemical production is from fossil fuels, including most of the 10,000+ chemicals used to make plastics. With global chemical production expected to double by 2030 and planned plastic production expected to triple by 2050, there is simply no way to meet climate goals without addressing chemicals and plastics. The chemical industry’s products are embedded in more than 96% of manufactured goods, but current-day industrial chemicals, the majority of which were created decades ago, were designed for cost and performance, not safety and sustainability. If we only focus on reducing embodied carbon without stopping the use of hazardous chemicals and materials, we will continue to face catastrophic impacts on the health of people, ecosystems, and our planet. This is not the green future envisioned by climate advocates.

Corporate & Government Commitment

To successfully move to safer products and manufacturing, it is critically important that retailers, manufacturers, and governments adopt comprehensive corporate and governmental safer chemicals policies at the highest levels both to avoid highly hazardous chemicals and plastics and to identify and adopt safer solutions. The elements of a bold policy include: setting targets to achieve the elimination of the most hazardous chemicals and plastics by 2040; transparency, banning the bad, and safer solutions.

Transparency

People have a fundamental right to know about hazardous chemicals put into products and used in manufacturing. This includes workers, frontline communities, consumers, businesses, and government.

Full ingredient information on chemicals and materials through the supply chain, in combination with hazard assessments for each chemical ingredient, is necessary to establish where hazards exist and where safer solutions are needed. It is critical for making informed decisions by manufacturers, retailers, government purchasers, and consumers.

Transparency means:

  • Government policies require public disclosure of product ingredients and any chemicals that contaminate the product.
  • Manufacturers provide disclosure to workers, communities, their customers and require disclosure from their suppliers.
  • Retailers require their suppliers to provide ingredient and contaminant information to them, including “contaminants” in recycled materials, and disclose that information to the public.
  • Businesses adopt programs to implement their corporate chemical policies to ensure their products and packaging don’t contain toxic chemicals, through product testing, training, and other practices.

Ban the Bad

Steps must be taken to ban the most hazardous chemicals and plastics from commerce. This means ending their use in manufacturing and as ingredients in products, packaging, and the built environment globally. Where groups of chemicals have been assessed to be highly hazardous, they should be eliminated using a class-based approach to avoid substitution with other structurally similar high-hazard chemicals.

Actions that must be taken to ban the bad:

  • Manufacturers and retailers should develop and implement restricted substances lists (RSLs) for highly hazardous chemicals and plastics in products and manufacturing restricted substances lists (MRSLs) for process chemicals used in manufacturing.
  • Governments, from states to the national and international levels, should pass laws and regulations banning the production and use of highly hazardous chemicals and plastics.

To help retailers, brands, and governments begin prioritizing chemicals and plastics for elimination, we have developed the Ban the Bad Priority List, a list of highly hazardous chemicals and plastics that must be targeted for phased out.

Safer Solutions

Safer solutions to hazardous chemicals and plastics are those that are inherently less hazardous. They may take the form of a safer chemical, material, product, or simply the elimination of unnecessary hazardous chemicals. Safer solutions are effective substitutes (i.e., they work). Some safer solutions may not be scaled, but this is where investments should be made. A chemical hazard assessment is needed to identify safer chemical alternatives, to avoid the trap of regrettable substitution. Manufacturers, retailers, and governments should actively support the development and implementation of safer solutions.

Examples of safer solutions for businesses and governments include:

  • U.S. EPA Safer Choice has certified over 1,700 formulated products where all intentionally added ingredients have been assessed as safer.
  • Clean Production Action certifies several different product types, including cleaners and degreasers, firefighting foam, and food packaging, through its GreenScreen Certified program. Higher-level certifications require disclosure of all intentionally added ingredients and impurities, which must be assessed as meeting GreenScreen Benchmark 2 or higher.
  • ChemFORWARD helps businesses and government institutions assess and identify safer alternatives to toxic chemicals through collaborative projects and tools such as the chemical hazard data trust and ingredient intelligence reports.
  • The Washington State Department of Ecology’s Safer Products for Washington program identifies safer solutions to priority products that commonly use priority chemicals of concern, such as bisphenols in receipt paper. Where safer solutions are identified, Ecology may restrict the chemicals of concern by class in the priority product. The state also invests in companies making transitions to safer solutions through its Product Replacement Program.
  • TCO Certified requires that electronics products receiving its certification use flame retardants and plasticizers that are GreenScreen Benchmark 2 or higher.

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